On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 18:12 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > Gianluca Turconi wrote: > > > Uhm... I have to point out a thing: I'm a very pragmatic man and I have > > had a law education. Thus, as I've written to Marco, clues are not > > evidences for me. They can be used in discussions like these ones, but > > they have not any real validity when we want to confirm an assertion > > like: "The OpenOffice project vividly illustrates the limitations of > > open source as a way of producing software" > > The OpenOffice project vividly illustrates how free software is more > than licensing changes.
The licensing of software enables the various development models. In the case of OpenOffice.org the starting code was bought, so its historical roots are different from a project like the Linux kernel and a lot of GNU software. The details of the process are very likely to be different if the main control of the project is a company like Sun compared to a foundation like Mozilla. Though the current code is largely controlled by Sun through people employed by them, anyone can fork the code and set up an alternative community with different rules and different working methods. IBM have already done and to an extent Novell and probably some other projects. Is it helpful or damaging? I guess it depends on whether that action improves the code and its development or makes it worse. Probably need more time to find out. Certainly if the license was changed from LGPL to GPL there would be an effect. The nature of the license is likely to affect the development process and the development community. The license enables a process to take place, it does not necessarily guarantee it. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
